Application note: Flow cytometry handbook

Flow cytometry is a powerful, high-throughput technology that is used to characterise suspensions of single cells or particles.

Traditional applications involve immunophenotyping of cells prepared from culture or tissue using fluorescent-dye conjugated antibodies that recognise specific cell surface or intracellular antigens. By combining different fluorescent probes in a multi-colour panel, several parameters are measured simultaneously on thousands to millions of individual cells. The relative abundance of antigens/probes in a population of cells is determined by calculating the fluorescence intensity for each parameter and analysed to compare gene expression patterns between samples.